By Pawan Deshpande "Recently, Kimberley Isbell of the Nieman Journalism Lab cited a Harvard Law report and published an extensive post on news aggregation and legal considerations. From a curation perspective, the whole article is interesting, but what was the most surprising was that her recommendations for being an ethical content aggregator, were the same as being an effective content curator."

The author makes a strong case for his assertion that ethical content aggregation and effective content curation are synonymous. Deshpande's "5 Rules to being an Ethical Content Curator" are a solid start on a list of best practices for curation.

Curate To Educate: From Online Courses to Full Learning Programs

"This is an interesting trend as in the past most tools to deliver educational content relied on the author creating and posting only his own materials. The fact that you can now include valuable content published by others opens up the gates both for the curation of lots of existing content into useful learning courses as well as for the issues of whether and how to compensate curated content from others"

New interesting tools make it possible to create online courses and full online learning programs, by drastically simplifying the design process while providing simple tools to curate and bring together valuable existing content already published online.

The first I'd like to bring to your attention is Classmill, which makes it very easy to create online courses by providing a very simple and intuitive interface and allowing the author to add with ease his own texts, as well as images, links and video clips coming from elsewhere on the web. Anyone can publish an online course and make it visible to everyone. Only those who register and join in can see the full contents and can participate in the integrated discussion area for the course.

The second one is Learnyst, which goes one step beyond Classmill by facilitating the creation of a full online school with multiple courses and the ability to charge for selected ones.

Both tools are extremely easy to use, and allow the assembly of existing materials, whether owned or produced by others.

This is an interesting trend as in the past most tools to deliver educational content relied on the author creating and posting only his own materials. The fact that you now can easily include valuable content published by others opens up the gates both for the curation of lots of existing content into useful learning courses as well as for the issue of whether and how to compensate curated content from others.

This economic issue though, does not preclude tons of free high-quality content to be re-used and showcased in many new free learning courses and it provides those who want to learn with even more non-commercial alternatives to master their favorite topics.

Takeaway: You are going to see more of these tools and more subject-matter experts create valuable learning resources by bringing together key relevant content produced by others while adding tangible value, perspective and context.

If you have a strong passion or expertise it's time to start thinking about building your own online school.

Topik.in is a new news curation app, similar in many ways to a much simplified version of Scoop.it. With a dedicated bookmarklet you can basically curate and personalise any content you find online and post it to a dedicated *virtual board* on Topik.in

There's none of the advanced backend content discovery engine features, nor the powerful embedding, domain name mapping, social sharing and publishing options that Scoop.it offers, but Topik.in is also much simpler and for anyone who would find Scoop.it too complex or feature-rich for his initial needs, it could be a potential starting point.

Posts appear in a layout much similar to Scoop.it two-column magazine vertical layout. Content can be easily shared on all major social channels, and when a reader clicks on a curated post, the full original content page loads up under a Topik.in frame that maintains context and reference to the original curated post.

It is possible to follow other boards and to repost content posted by others. During Beta each user can create up to 8 curated boards on different topics.

Good for anyone wanting to get his feet wet with news curation without needing to get a more complex tool and without needing to spend anything.

The digital world allows us to take as many pictures as we want and post those to all the social networks. But when it comes to aggregating the events surrounding... Keep reading →

Joyce Valenza's insight:

Looks useful for creating quicky movies at confs, etc. "The Vemory (like memory but with a V, get it?) app creates photo albums from all your photos, either stored on your iOS device or on your various social network accounts. The aggregated photo albums are presented as movies with music and peppered with the comments left by your friends on the photos pulled from social networks."

I have been writing my PhD so haven't updated this blog for a while. Thesis writing is taking up a lot of my mental space as I get the ideas, storyline and contentions to 'coalesce' and cohere in a...

Joyce Valenza's insight:

This definition clarifies what good looks like in social media curation:

"Digital curation therefore is not just about finding relevant material, although that is a significant part of it, but is also about creating a specific and unique experience by utilising the resulting materials which then become contextualised within a new space. A curator, therefore, whether she is a journalist-by-proxy such as Popova or a student completing an assignment in a classroom, not only collects and interprets, but also creates a new experience with it. In this respect, curation is a process of problem solving, re-assembling, re-creating, and stewardship of other people’s writing . . .

Via Robin Good--a NYT experiment that "acts as a reading list for your Twitter feed, finding all the links that are being shared by those you follow on Twitter and displaying them each with their full titles and descriptions. This flips the Twitter model, treating the links as primary and the commentary as secondary (you can still see all the tweets about each link, but they are less prominent). Vellum puts a spotlight on content, making it easy to find what you should read next."

Personalized learning is on the rise for learners in our schools. Redesigned schools include personal learning plans, playlists of content tailored to fit each learner, adaptive curriculum, and access to learning anytime and anywhere. That's great for students but what about teachers? Where's the pe

Joyce Valenza's insight:

EdSurge Guide presents a great summary with its infographic.

"Personalized learning communities, strategies and tools for educators in the digital era."

"When we curate content online, it enhances who we are, both in the sense of... - we learn things, and we help to define ourselves by understanding our own interests - and in a more external way, by allowing other people to better understand who we are.

It becomes part of our ethos, part of our personal brand."

Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University offers an interesting insight into why curation is such a valuable activity for humankind by pointing out that our efforts to gather, collect and order the information chaos surrounding us, is a critical activity to understand ourselves, to learn more about anything, to make sense of the world we live in.

Even at the lowest, most amateurish level of social sharing or bookmarking, our best efforts to collect and order information, even when they are imperfect, incomplete or even inaccurate, do have great value.

The value is in the opportunity we create for others to discover, to get a better hint or a better understanding, of what we have collected and sorted. And even when collecting is a personal act of self-expression or a reflection of a pet interest, still, there is value, as "people are a very important way by which we can order our understanding of the world".

Content curation enhances who we are because it helps us Understand and Navigate the world we live in through someone else eyes and experience.

Inspiring. Truthful. Great perspective from which to look and appreciate the full value of curation.

The free version only allows public mindmaps/brainstorms, so if you are in a school setting and don't want student work to be shared, this might not be the right tool. The professional version that allows you to make the maps private is a steep $49 a month.

A Japanese news-recommendation app called SmartNews that mines Twitter for topical content has raised $36 million and says it plans to use those funds to expand into North America and take on Flipboard

engaAccording to the Content Marketing Institute, original content should be the cornerstone of your content marketing. And curating content can raise your brand awareness and bring more visitors to your website. So how do these two fundamental marketing pieces work together? Very nicely. In terms of content marketing in any industry, how you marry creation and curation could mean your success or failure.

Specifically in education, EdTech consultants, teachers and librarians are doing a great job combining creation and curation to showcase student creativity, school information and thought leadership. We've pulled four worthy examples of users in the EdTech space who exemplify using powerful online tools to master creation and curation consistently. Continue reading →

Image courtesy of verbeeldingskr8 How Scoop.it, Google Plus & Twitter can turn chaos into order [author]If you do anything professionally related to online technology, you understand the immense amount of data you need to sort through each day. Th...

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.